


to come in out of the rain

by givemebaretrees



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:42:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givemebaretrees/pseuds/givemebaretrees
Summary: “You’ve got a dinner invitation,” said Felix, two days later, like someone had mailed me a poisonous snake.The Duke of Murtagh had left our place in a hurry this morning. I wondered if this foul attitude was the result or the cause.“We do,” I said, cautious, ‘cause it had both our names on the top.“No, it’s meant for you,” said Felix, “Quite clearly.”Kay/Mildmay, Felix/Murtagh. Mildmay and Felix solve another ghost problem. Kay learns how to communicate within his marriage. The Duke of Murtagh visits, and Vanessa Brightmore (née Pallister) negotiates her marriage. And on top of it all, the lighthouse at Grimglass runs.
Relationships: Kay Brightmore/Mildmay Foxe
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

Kay was bored, and I only found it out because Vanessa wrote me a letter. It was a nice letter. She had pretty writing (and I was only just now finding out how fucking hard it was to have pretty writing), and she didn’t use any words I didn’t know. She didn’t say Kay was bored in so many words, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t obvious.

And the Duke of Murtagh was visiting, so I was itching to get out.

Vanessa ended her letter with, “I am sure he would be most pleased if you were to drop by and read the histories to him again.”

So, I went to Grimglass proper, which was a nice long walk from the virtuers’ quarters up in the lighthouse. I didn’t bring Felix because I liked walking around by myself now that I thought I kind of had a handle on my bad leg, and I knew how to rest if I needed and take it slow and sometimes I even asked for help if I had a couple of coins to give in return. And I also liked having something to talk to him about at the end of the day. Only what I didn’t count on was that it started to rain.

In Mélusine, rain just meant that the streets got slick with shit, and you were cold all the time. Rain’s better when there’s no walls around you, and you’re not crammed into a city all breathing on top of each other. You can’t get dry that way. I think the first time I saw the hills up here in Grimglass after the rain, and the cold air burned in my chest, and the dark-ocean against the middling skies—I remember something opened up inside me.

It’s a lot less romantic when the skies really let you have it, though, and they did right then and there.

“Mr. Foxe,” said the servant who opened the door, after a moment of gawping at me. I guess they’d been expecting me. Somebody probably told them to look for a mean looking bastard with a big ugly scar. Probably weren’t expecting the drowned rat look. “Did you not have an umbrella?”

“Didn’t need one, when I left,” I said, and I almost shook my head like a dog when I walked inside because I figured it’d be no more or less than he expected, the way he was looking at me. But I didn’t, because Felix wasn’t here to be mortified by it and anyway, I was trying to be presentable. My leg ached like hell, though. I knew I was beginning to get one of the cramps that was like to have me considering laudanum. I never do it, but it ain’t always easy.

“This way, sir,” said the servant. “Warden Brightmore will be glad that you’re here.”

I took a look at him, for real this time. He wasn’t happy the way the ones up in the Duke’s place had been, to hear that Kay had a visitor, but I wasn’t gonna hold it against him.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

It was warm, with the soft glow that candles give to a place—not like Felix’s cold starry witchlights. I wanted to sit by the fire, and maybe catch my breath, but he’d already as much said that they were expecting me and that I should head upstairs. There was a chair that I was already imagining myself sinking into.

I could’ve cried, honestly.

“What?”

“Your name,” I said again, slower this time.

“Oh!” He paused. “Paul Wexler.”

Yeah, he looked like a Paul. It wouldn’t be hard to remember.

“Thanks, Paul,” I said, and followed him to the world’s fucking steepest and narrowest staircase. It was slow going, and Paul didn’t realize it at first, even with me leaning on Jashuki and everything, and he was halfway up the stairs before he turned around. Even from half a staircase away, I could see his cheeks go red. I guess it’s not good manners to forget your master’s guest is lame.

“I’ll get there,” I told him.

People do this thing when you’re a cripple. You ever seen a dog sitting up on its hind legs, the way its paws come together in front of its chest? People train dogs to do it like they think it’s cute. And they do it with their own hands when they want to reach out but they’re afraid they’re gonna offend you.

I hate the way they look all worried. I hate it less than I used to, but that don’t mean I’m okay with it, or anything. It wasn’t like he could do anything, anyway, since, like I said, he was halfway up the stairs himself. There was a rail, and I could kind of pull myself up. It worked.

“Do you need—”

“No.”

Thank Kethe he shut the fuck up after that.

When I made it to the top of the stairs, Jashuki in hand, and steadied myself far enough away from the edge that I wasn’t going to go toppling back down all those stairs I’d worked so fucking hard to get up, I could see him relax.

“To the left,” he said, and set off again, slower this time. He could learn, at least. And he weren’t so nervous once we were on flat ground and I wasn’t liable to go pitching backwards and breaking my neck. More the worse for him, going back down would be harder, but most people don’t know that to begin with.

Now that I wasn’t trying to make my way up the stairs, I could look around.

Not a place I would’ve tried to do a job at back in my past life, and not one anyone would have hired me to do a job at neither. The walls were mostly kind of bare, and no fancy knick-knacks lying around, just plain old tables and rows of paintings on the walls. Flash stuff still, but I could tell you that unless any of it had a Corambin history I didn’t know, it weren’t worth much.

I didn’t know what to expect when he took me to Kay’s office, but I pulled out the book from where it was tucked under my arm. Paul knocked. Kay made a noise that might’ve been “come in” but maybe not, and if it wasn’t it was close enough because Paul opened the door.

“Mr. Mildmay Foxe is here to see you,” he said.

And I had the just the right angle when Paul gestured for me to come in to see the way that Kay’s face broke into an honest smile.

“I brung a book,” I said.

I had thought maybe _he_ would want a break on account of people spent all day reading to him, but it seemed he didn’t mind so much when it was something he wanted to read and not some letter from an intended that thought they didn’t maybe have to do so much charity as Kay was expecting. Or a letter from some rich bastard who thought maybe they didn’t have to pay so many taxes as Kay asked. Or a letter from some poor bastard who was not sure if they were being charged the right amount of taxes by a rich bastard who owned the land they lived on and they weren’t sure if maybe they were owned too.

“Excellent! Was wondering if I need present myself to the virtuers’ quarters in order to see you again,” Kay said. Even through the sharp words, and the dark circles under his eyes, the smile on his lips came through clear as spring. Believe me, I know the difference. Julian, at his elbow, looked startled.

“It took us a while to get settled,” I said, but somehow it didn’t really seem like enough of an excuse, especially because Kay didn’t seem all that mad and I felt like maybe he should have been. Paul pulled out the chair at the other end of Kay’s desk, and I sat down.

His office was a room with a big gorgeous window, all angled glass like a bubble with cushions on the wide sill. Not an easy window to open in a pinch, actually. There was a door—must’ve been a closet of some kind—in the back, and his desk was tidy. Julian had a letter opener in his hand big enough to give me a start, but he was holding it like no one in the world had ever held a knife before, with a multi-page letter in his hands, writing small enough that I wondered at him not needing a glass to see it with.

“Julian, you may go,” said Kay, “It is late enough in the day that I think we can leave this letter till tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir!” said Julian, and if he had been giving me a bit of a fish eye before, now I was positively his favorite person. “Bye, Mr. Foxe!”

I nodded, and he practically flew out the door. I think he’d have gone through the window if it wasn’t thirty feet off the ground.

“So, what book did you bring?”

“The histories,” I said, holding them up, which I guess it was good that there was no one around who could see how stupid it was for me to do that.

“Am glad of it. But, I would happily talk of your time settling in instead. Do you like Grimglass so far? Is Felix comfortable?”

So I told him all about how Felix and I had settled in, and how Felix had taken the virtuers’ vows and how that had been a whole thing, but Felix had done it anyway, and the lighthouse at Grimglass was real easy for him to run, on account of it was mostly just a library and he would have wanted to spend all his time in there anyway and the actual lighthousing part was done by hired workers paid for by the estate. I did the accounts.

I didn’t read the histories to Kay that day. But he didn’t mind, and when I got home, I was hoarse with all the talking I’d done.

I only noticed later that he wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, and he never once mentioned Vanessa. I would’ve guessed the wrong reason, though, if I’d picked up on it.

* * *

“ _You’ve_ got a dinner invitation,” said Felix, two days later, like someone had mailed me a poisonous snake.

The Duke of Murtagh had left our place in a hurry this morning. I wondered if this foul attitude was the result or the cause.

“ _We_ do,” I said, cautious, ‘cause it had both our names on the top.

“No, it’s meant for _you_ ,” said Felix, “Quite clearly.”

“Okay,” I said. “Have a nice night.”

I left. By the time I got halfway to Kay’s house I wasn’t mad any more, on account of the weather, and by the time I got all of the way to Kay’s, I was too exhausted to even think about Felix. Paul insisted on sitting me down for a good ten minutes before letting me in, and giving me the opportunity to “wash up” which I guess meant I’d worked up something of a sweat.

I didn’t mind, though Kay’s house sort of still felt like it wasn’t meant for me to rest in. I wiped down my forehead and decided not to worry about my underarms, and tried to rest anyway, and Paul herded me into the dining room. Vanessa stood up when I entered.

There was a clock on the wall, and I realized I was half an hour late.

“I am _so_ pleased you could join us for dinner,” said Vanessa Brightmore, and if she was bothered by my lateness I didn’t see any of it on her face. I didn’t see none of the annoyance from back when I first saw her, either, though she still looked like a bear that someone had taught to wear a dress. “We can start without Kay. He’s always held up by some letter or another. Poor Julian, the man takes hours to compose a simple reply.”

And she began to crack open the bright red lobster on her plate.

Everybody up there in Grimglass ate lobster. They got these tricky little pliers and hammers to open them up with, and I was no good with any of it, but Vanessa Brightmore looked like the kind of woman who could perfectly shell a lobster and take down an armed assassin with the same damn cutlery. Not all elegant, mind you, not something from a play, but effective-like. A real Voadicea.

Felix could use it all, but he weren’t gonna take down so much as a fly with it all unless the fly had been boiled alive first.

“Thank you,” I said, because even if Felix wasn’t here I knew my manners. I tried my hand at my own lobster. I didn’t do too good, but at least I got some meat out to dip in the butter the servants had provided. And Vanessa didn’t offer to help me—which even I knew would have been the most embarrassing thing. “I’m glad to be invited.”

There was a long moment. I didn’t know what she wanted to ask, so I couldn’t answer, but Kethe, there was a big fucking question in her face. I was getting around to wondering if I really had fucked up the lobster thing when she finally opened her mouth.

“Kay likes you,” she said, finally.

“I like him too,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to.

“You treat him kindly,” she said, “and he doesn’t mind. He talks of you often. I’m afraid I quite disregarded you the first time we met, and for that, I apologize.”

“I’m used to it, following Felix around and all.”

It just slipped out, faster’n I could stop it. She frowned at me.

“I didn’t understand what you said,” she said, “I cry your mercy. Can you please repeat it?”

I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not, and I didn’t want to risk it if she was trying to be polite, and giving me an out when I’d fucked up, so I said, real slow and careful, “Never mind. It was no matter, ma’am. Thanks for inviting me over to dinner.”

“Vanessa,” she said. “You are on first name terms with my husband, I hope you will be on first name terms with me. Unless you would prefer for me to call you Mr. Foxe?”

“No,” I said, “Mildmay is fine.”

“Then we understand each other,” she said, although of course we didn’t, because I couldn’t imagine Vanessa Brightmore understanding me if she was given twenty years and a map of my head, and I sure as hell didn’t understand why she was inviting to dinner the weird guy whose fucked-up voice her husband didn’t mind listening to. Guess I didn’t do a good enough job of being convincing, because she looked at me, resigned but frowning, and opened her mouth to say something. Then we heard a soft tapping against the doorframe of the dining room, and Kay made his way in.

I had Jashuki, and Kay had his own helper, of sorts. It had a face on it, too, a catlike face, but not the snarl of Jashuki. It was an ordinary cane, much like mine, and he used it to find the doorways in Grimglass.

I liked the thumping that came before Kay entering a room. What can I say? I’m a thief. It makes my life easier when people make noise while they’re moving about.

“Hello, Kay,” she said, and there was a tone to her voice that weren’t nice but weren’t mean, neither, and I realized she was trying not to ask how he was or if he had any trouble or needed any help, because Kay would’ve been pissed. As slow as he was—boy, didn’t I know how that went—he made his way to the table, and sat down.

“Hi, Kay,” I said, and his jaw nearly dropped. I didn’t know I was a surprise. I tried not to let the feeling go to my head, but what can I say? I’ll just say I haven’t always been a _nice_ surprise, and leave it at that. “Lady Brightmore invited me.”

“ _Vanessa_ , darling,” she corrected again, and if she didn’t look the part she sure had that flashie speech down. She looked at me like she thought I was gonna protest, but I let the flashie types dig their own grave when it comes to friendly speech. And after years with Felix it didn’t hardly surprise me to be called _darling_.

“Mildmay,” he said, and his voice was warm. You know how they say someone’s eyes light up? Even Kay’s spooky blank eyes can do that, and to me they weren’t spooky no more anyway. Like Felix’s odd eyes when you got used to them. They were just another part of Kay, like his nose and his shoulders or his hair that always looked like some parent-type had got a hand in there and ruffled it all up.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said.

“Have you tried the potatoes?” he asked. “Our cook is a genius with them.”

Kay talked to me about anything but me or himself. He made me remember that there were things outside of me, and Felix, and the shit that we got ourselves wrapped up in. I wished Felix had come, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t have a good time without him neither. And Vanessa, when she turned on the lady-of-the-house charm, was a real good host. Or I mean, that is to say, she didn’t treat me like something stuck on her shoe, or like an extra limb of Felix’s that could answer questions about what he was doing at any given moment.

“Mildmay,” said Vanessa, “what do you think of the virtuers’ quarters up here? I have often been told they’re lonely.”

“I don’t mind that so much,” I said, “I used to miss the city, but now I like having my space. Better’n the Mirador, I can tell you.”

“ _Real_ -ly,” she said, all slow and drawn out. Not mocking-like, just drawing out the word, like maybe if we filled up space in the conversation she’d have to say less before I left. “But surely there were comforts in the Mirador…? Servants? The seat of the Mélusinean government?”

“Managed in Mélusine on my own for three septads, ma’am. I didn’t need the Mirador’s comforts and I don’t think they’re worth the cost of living in there. ‘Sides,” I said, finally, “Felix has got these little bottled ships in his office, and I can tell you, there’s nothing like that in all of Mélusine. I used to, ah, work in jewelry, and I never saw anything so delicate.”

“Oh, like a pawnbroker?” she said, tilting her head. “Or did you make it?”

I bet Kay didn’t tell Vanessa jack shit about me. I wondered if he thought he was protecting me, or if I was a secret. And I liked Vanessa a little bit for the way that she didn’t wrinkle her nose at just the thought that sometimes people had to give up their valuables.

“Yes, ma’am, like a pawnbroker,” I said.

Not a bad lie, as far as they go. A thief has to be their own pawnbroker before they get to the shop, ‘cause the wrong pawnbroker is just as much a thief as they are.

She smiled. 

“You seem like you have a soft heart,” she said, “I bet you always gave them more than their items were worth.”

Like I said, twenty years and a map. And flatter than your average street-vendor’s crepe. But the smile did nice things for her face.

“If you ask my boss, I was just incompetent,” I said, which was true in its own way too, and she waved off my words with a single hand, nice bracelets jangling as she moved. A classy lady’s version of the way that Felix pushed my words aside when he got mad.

“Tell me about the bottled ships, though!” she said, after a moment. “I have heard that Virtuer Young left quite a collection.”

So I told her about the Philomela, and the Alcestis, and the Intrepid and the Vengeur, and she pretended like she cared, and Kay sometimes volunteered information about the Corambin navy. I’m guessing Caloxa didn’t have one. He told his information with no smile, no lift in his voice, too, like it weren’t nothing more than ink on a page, but I could tell that was for Vanessa’s benefit, and she also pretended she didn’t know that he was speaking from more than books. It would have been a story if he’d cared. She would have been pretty if she had.

It was a nice pleasant way to spend an evening if you didn’t have anything else to do, I guess. I was glad that Felix hadn’t come with.

They kept me late, and sent me home in their coach.

* * *

Paul was good at cards.

I found this out ‘cause it was too late to visit Kay, and Felix was busy with the library, and I was starting to get a kind of itch for something that wasn’t big arched ceilings and fancy hallways too wide for me to feel comfortable clinging to one side. It might’ve been better’n the Mirador—at least there were windows—but it still made me feel like something was crawling up my back, some nights.

And a tavern ain’t hard to find, if you’re the kind of guy who likes to look.

I found just the right kind, too, all dim and cozy, and everyone there fitting right into their table like it was made for them ‘cause it had held their asses since the dawn of time.

Paul’s eyes went wide when he saw me, but I gave him a wave, and he nodded at me, and that was good an invitation as any.

“Mr. Foxe?”

“Mildmay,” I said, just nice enough to be friendly, and just firm enough that he wasn’t gonna say it again. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. I guess he thought I was flash like Felix, which is maybe a fair assumption if you’ve never heard me talk and you’ve only seen me with my brother, but Paul as far as I knew had never experienced being on the receiving end of Felix’s snooty attitude, and I knew how much trouble he had understanding me anyway. So he didn’t have an excuse to be surprised. “Whatcha playing?”

It turned out to be some kinda quirky version of Long Tiffany, with rules that I was pretty sure were just for this particular bar but which everyone at the table swore was how they’d played their whole life.

I don’t much go in for house rules, to be honest. But it was a nice enough way to spend an evening.


	2. Chapter 2

Yeah, I’ll say it: it was a shock when Kay kissed me.

How the hell he knew where to aim I’ll never be able to figure out. Something to do with maybe the way he put his hand on my shoulder, the way his other hand felt for the back of my neck. His hands were warm, and dry, and I couldn’t pull myself away.

I wanna make one thing clear. I never… with Felix… I never wanted anything. Dunno why, just never did. I wish I could say it was because I knew he was my brother, but I don’t think that was it, because what’s one more fucked-up thing anyway, when you have a few septads’ worth of fucked-up things, and I guess it wasn’t because I wasn’t molly—violet, like he said—even though I thought it was that for a real long time. And if you’d asked me before that day about how I felt about the Warden of Grimglass I would’ve told you that he was my _friend_.

That I didn’t feel nothing for him that way, even if I liked how patient he was with my reading and how soft his voice was. Even if sometimes when we sat, I liked to watch the way the light hit his hair, made it glow like an aura around him, the way his mouth moved when he talked. I knew he couldn’t see me looking at him, and maybe I should have felt bad about that. It wasn’t like I was spying, or nothing, I was sitting there talking to him, and maybe I looked at him more’n I looked at the paintings on the wall, or out the complicated stained-glass window behind his desk, and maybe I was glad that Julian usually left us during these times.

I’ll tell the other truth too, which is that I kissed him back.

Kay tasted like the tea he always drank—just plain black tea, no sugar or milk or nothing. He kissed all hesitant at first, all closed-mouth and no tongue or teeth, and when he realized I was kissing back, he dropped his hands to my side.

“You—” he said, quietly, “do you—?”

“I ain’t molly, or violet, or whatever you call it,” I said. “At least, I ain’t never been before now.”

“Ah.”

“But you can do that again,” I said, and I guess it makes sense that even a blind man will still roll his eyes if he’s annoyed, especially if he ever had sight in the first place. Even if he’s Kay Brightmore, and his eyes are spooky and burned-out gray.

“You need not be ‘molly’ to enjoy a kiss,” said Kay. “If you prefer to consider yourself the way you did before, I can assure you that you are not the first man ever kissed by another man who enjoyed it, but did not consider himself violet.”

“Oh. Sure,” I said, because I thought about it, and, yeah, I did. I wanted.

I kissed him—I started it—the second time. I never kissed anyone like him before. I ain’t a big guy, but kissing someone about your same size is different, somehow. I honest forgot just about everything, right up until we were both out of breath and I was running my hands up and down his sides. He was clinging to me, a little shaky, which was going to be real bad in a minute unless we both sat down, and then, when I was looking down at him, I remembered.

“Your _wife?_ ”

“Will not embarrass her,” said Kay, as breathless as me. I had a fuck of a time for a minute trying to figure out if it was a statement or a command, until he continued. “She needs not more than a man to give her a name, and my experience as a margrave. Has told me so, herself.”

“She got something on the side, too?”

“Never asked,” said Kay, faintly.

“Maybe you should. Figure out if she needs you—” Okay, so I couldn’t bring myself to say _us._ “To stay quiet about it or if she don’t care if you’re obvious. ‘Cause let me tell you, something about me makes _everyone_ think something’s up.”

“I find it… difficult to tell her. She knows I am violet. Told her aught else.”

“Well, maybe that’s part of the problem.” I didn’t mean it to come out sharp, but it did, and if I’d said it to Felix it would have been a problem for at _least_ a few decads. If anyone had said it to me, I would have _flipped_. I regretted it as soon as it was out of my mouth.

But Kay sighed.

“Very well. I will talk to her. I swear it.”

He ran his fingertip down my chin. I wondered what it would look like if Kay drew a picture of me. He’d never seen my face, but he’d felt my scar. How was that for a joke? Even the blind know I’m ugly as fuck.

But he didn’t feel like he was _thinking_ about my scar. His hands were too soft for that. Not even Ginevra had been so soft with me. You would have thought a soldier, even a small guy like Kay, would’ve been less gentle. I noticed that he had scars, too—not like mine, but battle scars nonetheless. They were under his clothes, up and down his arms, and a small one by his chin. Not so’s you’d notice, if you weren’t an inch from him.

“I just,” I said, remembering Mehitabel and—everything, “I don’t like being on the side.”

“Mm. Will take that under consideration, too.”

I liked the way he smiled, open and pleased, and I wondered what he saw or felt, that made him gentle. I wondered it all the damn way home after he all but kicked me out with a solid “come back tomorrow, Mildmay. And send Felix my greetings.”

I wished I could’ve smiled back at him—I wished it wouldn’t have been ugly as hell if I did. I wished he could’ve seen me, but not the face I have. Wishes on top of wishes.

What’s the point, Milly-fox, in wanting things you can’t have?

I thought—but I wondered if he thought he was doing me a favor, protecting my virtue or something. No, that ain’t it, ‘cause I know he knew how upset I was about him being married. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know when the last time was that anyone looked out for me like that. Gave me a chance to think about my choices before I made them, and let me make them when I damn well wanted to.

But anyway, gentle or more, I wasn’t supposed to stay, so Paul helped me down the stairs, wringing his hands the whole time, and if I had to lean up against a few trees to make it back home, well. No one had to know.

“You seem happy,” said Felix, sounding cross.

If anything can blow out a mood like a candle, it’d be Felix when he’s pissed. I try not to let him get to me, I really do.

“I saw Kay today,” I told him. If there was any chance of me telling him what was going on, that was it, out the window. “He says hi.”

“Oh, how nice,” said Felix.

“Yep,” I said, because if Felix is being awful there’s nothing else to do besides agree. “You could go visit him, too.”

“I will,” said Felix, defensive.

* * *

After that I visited real regular. Vanessa invited me to dinner, which I took to mean that she and Kay had talked. Sometimes I took Felix with me, and when I took Felix, he sometimes left before I did. Or we left together.

I liked it best when he left before I did.

Kay took it slow. I think I never took it so slow with anyone, ever. With Keeper it was—always her, initiating, and with Ginevra we probably fucked right away. I forget. I wish it wasn’t true that I didn’t remember, but it was. It’d been a real fucking long few years. And besides Keeper, and Ginevra, there was Mehitabel, and we’d annoyed the shit out of each other at first and I don’t think that counts the same way. Besides them, the rest were just fucking, even if we knew each other for a while beforehand.

But Kay and I would kiss, after I’d read to him for a while, he’d walk over and lean down over me, and if I was real lucky he’d climb into my lap and run his hands on the bare skin of my stomach under my shirt but it never went further than that, on account of there were always servants just outside the door.

We’d kiss, and just when I was out of breath and starting to dare to run my hands down his sides—once I cupped his ass in my hands—he’d push back, kiss me on the cheek, and stand up, moving back to his own desk with a grace I wouldn’t have guessed he’d have. But I guess his desk never moved, and never changed size, and he placed his hand on it and used it as a guide.

And if I had to wait a few minutes before I was decent enough to leave his office, he didn’t comment.

“What do you want from this?” I asked him, once, when we were sitting on a little couch. I’d set the book aside, with a little bookmark Kay had given me to mark our place. I loved that damn bookmark. It was a lace ribbon, strands in the shape of flowers so delicate you would’ve thought breathing would’ve broken them, and this sharp shade of green like no forest I’d ever been in. Kay had kissed it before he’d given it to me, like a lady giving a favor. Even Felix had complimented it.

He rested his head against my shoulder. We’d been dozing off, like we often did, under a blanket that he’d had the servants bring me when I said it was kinda cold. It was barely big enough for both of us.

“Just this,” he said, and I felt his small, sharp shoulder bones under my hands shift as he curled up against my chest. I wondered if he’d lost weight since getting here, or gained it. Felix had told me once, how he looked real bad when he found him doing penance that first time. “Company, perhaps—but, no, if it were only company… could find anyone, though admittedly discretion would be difficult. No, I want you. In what small ways it is possible.”

It didn’t seem right to ask him why. I left it at that, but he wanted to ask too. Only fair, probably.

“And you? What do you seek?”

“Same thing, I guess,” I said, although it felt a little hollow that part of why he was here, curled up with me, instead of someone else, was because he thought I wouldn’t go around talking about it. “I like you.”

I felt his small warm huff of breath against my chest, even through my shirt.

“Know you are a man of action, not of words, but does seem passing strange to hear such a simple answer to a question that you yourself posed. No matter. You do not need to answer.” 

That was how things were for a while.

Only, I should have known that there was an entrance from Vanessa’s own office to his. I knew there was a door in the back of the room. I probably should have, at some point, asked Kay where it led to.

I let my guard down, and I shouldn’t have, ‘cause one day, when things were getting—when Kay and I were—

Anyway, Vanessa walked in. I heard the click of the lock before Kay did, and was pushing him off my lap trying to figure out where the hell it came from, when I saw out of the corner of my eye the door that I’d always assumed was a closet open, all on its own.

I won’t lie. I was _damn_ sure it was a ghost, and Kay scrambled to his feet, and I was making all kinds of gestures that Felix would’ve said were superstitious Lower City nonsense, only then I recognized Vanessa as the door shut again.

She wasn’t no idiot though, even if she did go white-faced as soon as she saw us.

And I knew Kay hadn’t talked to her.

“Ma’am,” I said.

She went all stiff like she thought I was going to hit her. Felt real bad, that did. I realized she wasn’t a bear that someone had put in a dress, and maybe not even the kind of woman who could take down an armed assassin with just a lobster cracker. She was just a lady, flat as anything, and she just found out her husband was having an affair.

“Mr. Foxe,” she said, and yeah, we weren’t on first name terms now, huh? I felt sick. “I think I would like you to leave right now so I can talk to my husband.”

I looked to Kay, and if I hadn’t had so much practice around Felix I almost might’ve flinched at the expression on his face. He’d gone cold. The change from the fuck-up who'd clung to nursery walls and wanted to throw himself to the big automaton that had killed all his friends just so it could finish the job, to a guy who laughed and ran an island and _kissed me_ had been so slow I hadn’t even noticed it. But now, the guy who’d had that conversation with Felix that I wasn’t supposed to hear was back.

I didn’t know what to do with him, so I left. I’d have gone out the damn window if it were faster. Wouldn’t have been the first time, neither.

* * *

If Felix thought it was weird that I didn’t visit Kay for a few weeks, he didn’t say anything. I guess he didn’t notice. I had a whole lie prepared—not that I can ever lie to Felix—about how Kay was going on a trip. If Felix caught me in the lie, I was going to tell him the truth. Kay didn’t send for me, and Vanessa didn’t invite me to dinner, and I didn’t go down to the tavern to play cards with Paul even on account of the fact that he was going to ask questions.

And I stewed and stewed because Felix _didn’t_ ask, which meant he didn’t care, which meant I was stuck in this house with a bunch of big glass bottles full of tiny ships, and no one gave a shit. I almost took one apart, but got too afraid at the last minute. Look, I’ve seen enough shit in the Lower City to know that when you take apart something of a dead man’s, something he worked real hard on, you don’t get off lightly. The Mirador don’t believe in ghosts, but I do.

I did run into the Duke of Murtagh at breakfast, though. I guess, since it was my turn to be in a shit mood and Felix’s turn to be in a good mood, the Duke was visiting.

A scholar I’d robbed once had this rotating thing, the sun and the planets and some of their moons (thought not all of them, I don’t think), and if you turned one, the others all turned. I’d played with them until they’d all lined up, eclipse after eclipse. I thought, sometimes, that maybe Felix and I were like those planets, and maybe someday we’d line up and be in a halfway decent mood around each other.

Probably some kind of fucking omen, if it ever did happen. I never heard anything good about an eclipse.

“Mr. Foxe,” he said.

And the Duke still annoyed the shit out of me, and so did being called that by a bunch of flash pricks who thought they were being respectful, and anyway, if they hadn’t thrown out Felix after all the shit he’d pulled they weren’t going to throw me out over a little lie like this.

“Not my name,” I said, finally. He frowned at me.

“What?”

“That’s not my name,” I said, slower this time. I knew I was being petty, and doing all sorts of things to ruin Felix’s life. “Felix just calls me it ‘cause I used to be known as Mildmay the Fox. On account of I was a burglar, not ‘cause of the hair. Don’t got a last name.”

“What a pair you two make,” said the Duke, spreading marmalade onto toast. “I expect you’re telling me this for a reason?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I ain’t awake enough to put up with being called the wrong damn name.”

“I suppose you can call me Ferrand,” said the Duke. “If it is to be first names.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick with Your Grace.”

“Carey, then,” said the Duke. “Surely you cannot object. You must call other men by their last names all the time.”

His toast crunched when he took a bite, and when he pulled back, there were crumbs in his mustache.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Why?”

“You don’t like me,” said the Duke. “I do notice, you know.”

I hated how goddamn much he was like Felix, and I hated that he’d done such a huge favor for Felix, and for Kay, and I hated that I still felt like I had to thank him for that, for both of those things even though I figured Kay wasn’t allowed to speak to me now and I couldn’t even blame Vanessa because Kay’d _lied_. And finally, I hated the Duke for the fact that all of those things he’d done for Kay and Felix meant he’d done me a favor, only indirectly, just another time where I was a fucking afterthought tagalong of Felix’s.

“Doesn’t have to be a thing,” I said, finally. “We can just eat quiet.”

And I could tell he was just like Felix in that _he_ hadn’t decided that I got to hate _him_ for no reason, which meant that he was going to put on the charm full force.

“You are just like Rothmarlin, you know,” he said, and it took me a minute to figure out that he meant _Kay_. And even though I’d just been thinking about Kay, anyway, because the Duke and just about everything else made me think about Kay, I felt the stupid way my chest squeezed at the name all over again.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You use few words,” he said, “but no one can ever doubt what you mean. Felix says you speak in riddles. I think you’re quite clear.”

“Not clear enough, if you’re still talking.”

“And, like Kay, you have no sense of propriety.”

He smiled.

“You’re just like Felix,” I said, finally. “You can’t stand not to have everyone in the room fucking falling over you, and when they don’t, you have to charm them until they do.”

_But not like Strych_ , I thought. Strych had to have power, but not love. Strych wanted fear, and pain, and Felix wanted those things too—powers and saints, hadn’t I been on the wrong end of that often enough?—but Murtagh just kept smiling in that bright, sunshine way. Not like Felix’s cat-with-a-mouse-between-its-paws smile. I almost could have believed it was real. But it was a _political_ smile.

“Then we understand each other,” said Murtagh.

And this time, I found I couldn’t disagree.

**Author's Note:**

> “And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”
> 
> ― Mary Oliver, Blue Iris: Poems and Essays


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